Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations Blog
On 6 & 7 June 2024, the “Religion and Urbanity” research group is convening an international workshop in the visibility of new religious movements in urban space across time and space. The workshop is organised by Martina Stercken, Susanne Rau and Klara-Maeve O’Reilly. The program
The peer-reviewed, open access database of the “Religion and Urbanity” research group, which is published by De Gruyter and edited by Susanne Rau and Jörg Rüpke, has been updated with eight new articles. All articles are published open access.
Mariia Orobinska, a former fellow with us in Erfurt, approaches the concept of urbanity from the angle of paradigmatic analysis in linguistics. It establishes the relationship between subjective and objective aspects of urbanity, which is viewed as a unique feature of a given place and characterized through “charm”, “atmosphere”, and “aesthetics”.
Our fellow Dr Epsita Halder, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University (Kolkata), was awarded a prize by the Indian History Congress at its latest session at Kakatiya University in Waragal for her monograph “Reclaiming Karbala – Nation, Islam and Literature of the Bengali Muslisms”
Our former fellow Elyse Semerdijan on the waqf in Aleppo as spaces where religion and urbanity intersect. Recognizing pious endowments – waqf/awaqf – varied across the Islamic World. The waqf, in its most basic definition, is a registered piece of income-generating property donated to a religious foundation, a charitable cause, or to one’s heirs in perpetuity.
Our fellow Claudine Moulin on the metamorphoses of the letter >Z< in the current war on Ukraine. At first glance, Z is thus doubly coded in the context of the Ukraine invasion – once in a pro-Putin / pro-Russian context, once in the context of its interpretation as a symbol of Russian totalitarianism and a war of aggression in violation of international law.
Hanafi law, one of the four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, which was widely practiced in the Ottoman Empire, was also the imperial legal system of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) in South Asia. Hanafi law governed property rights of Muslims and non-Muslims alike in the rural and the urban spheres of the Mughal Empire. Unfortunately, research on Hanafi law in Mughal India, in its theoretical and practical perspectives, remains virtually inexistant in current historiography. In this blogpost, I sketch the salient features of the relation between law and Mughal urban practices.
At the core of the research group Religion and Urbanity at the Max Weber Centre in Erfurt lies a keen interest in the ascription of value to different life forms relating to city and civic life, that is urbanity. Yet such valorisations do not necessarily presuppose one’s physical presence in a city. One may live a perfectly happy life in a villa rustica at a safe distance from interactions with the ‘masses’, but nevertheless – and presumably for that very reason – attributing urbanity to one’s own lifestyle by assuring oneself that true civil life is not found within the city, but either outside it or in the outskirts of it at the Sans souci.
On the occaision of the passing away of prof Champakalashmi we would like to share the condolence note published by her colleagues at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharal Nehru University in New Delhi. She was one of the finest and leading historians of early and medieval India, a passionate and committed teacher, and a friend to many.
Part two of recordings of the introductory comments by participants of the 2023 “Religious Ambivalences” conference, organised by Elisa Iori and Jörg Rüpke in November 2023 in Erfurt.
Workshop report by Fathima Thesni (Farook College, Kozhikode) on the nternational book project workshop titled ‘Towards a New History of Calicut’ on 5 & 6 January, 2024, organised by Susanne Rau and T Muhammadali.
Opening comments by Susanne Rau, spokesperson of the “Religion and Urbanity” research group at the Max Weber Centre, given at the 2023 conference “Ambivalences of Religion” in Erfurt.
The report by Mirjam Wien on the 2023 annual conference “Ambivalences of Religion”, organised by Elisa Iori and Jörg Rüpke in November 2023 has now been published on H-Soz-Kult.
A discussion of an example chosen from the series of readings concerned with the reception of Babylonian immigrants in the domain of the Palestinian rabbis. The example is taken from the chapter in which I discuss the Palestinian rabbis’ use of the figure of the Babylonian Other in shaping their collective Self. Those examples deal with the mockery of the Babylonian newcomers. This story is a final anecdote in the tragicomic trilogy of encounters between Babylonian immigrants and the Galilee’s inhabitants.
On h-soz-kult, you can now read the panel report by our fellow Heinrich Lang on the “Religion and Urbanity” panel at the 2023 Deutscher Historikertag in Leipzig. the panel “City Branding: Urbanity and the Construction of City Images in Europe and South Asia” was convened by Martin Christ, Sara Keller and Susanne Rau.
A post by our students on the Mikvah in Erfurt. Written sources on the mikvah ion Erfurt date back to the middle of the 13th century. They show that the Jewish community had to pay taxes for the bath and the land, first to the bishop, later to the city of Erfurt. From the medieval tax lists we learn that the area around the Mikvah was densely populated.